CollegeAmerica campuses in Phoenix and Flagstaff are on probation with their accrediting body because the schools focused more on adding students than on providing a quality education, the accreditor said.

The schools focus on career education, with programs in health care, business, technology and graphic arts.

The school also seemed to blame poor academic performance at its Flagstaff campus on students' ethnic backgrounds, the accrediting body said. The students at the Flagstaff campus are largely Native American.

The Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges announced the probation in September. It applies to multiple campuses owned by CollegeAmerica's parent company, the Utah-based Center for Excellence in Higher Education, including some sites in Arizona, Colorado, Utah and California.

The schools must respond to the probation letter by Dec. 21.

The accrediting body's probation letter claims the schools aren't designed to help students to succeed while the schools focus more on recruiting and advertising.

The company's "advertising and recruitment tactics coupled with a poorly documented admissions process has fostered the creation of a student population that the schools are ill-prepared to educate," the accrediting body wrote.

CollegeAmerica opened its Flagstaff campus in 2001 and its Phoenix campus in 2004, the school's website says.

These problems include inaccurate transcripts, enrollment agreements with faulty language, outdated instruction materials and equipment, administrative turnover, misleading advertising practices, below-benchmark graduation and employment rates, uncertainty over whether students meet admissions requirements, and a lack of proof that students are meeting program objectives or being employed in their field.

Center for Excellence in Higher Education CEO Eric Juhlin said the graduation and employment benchmarks were probably the most significant aspect of the probation letter. For some programs, the low number of students in programs can lead to low graduation and employment rates, he said.

For instance, if a program has 10 students, if six of them become employed in their field, the school is below the accreditor's benchmark. But if seven become employed in their field, they meet the benchmark.

The schools will be able to respond to all items laid out in the probation letter and show they can come into full compliance, he said.

Students at affected campuses were notified of the probation after it happened, as the accrediting body requires, Juhlin said. The schools have also prepared a notification for prospective students about the probation, he said.

Juhlin said he views the probation as a "good thing for students" because they will ultimately benefit from the continuous review and improvement required by accreditation. But day to day, students likely will not notice a change because the school is still accredited, meaning they can still participate in federal aid programs, he said.

Nevertheless, Juhlin said, there's always a risk that an institution could lose accreditation.

"We think that risk is extremely minor, but risk is always there," he said.

And, in many cases, schools close if they lose accreditation because they see big decreases in enrollment and a severe financial deficit, he said.

But, he said, "we are not planning nor do we see any reasons our institutions are going to close."

Flagstaff campus issues

A bandaged skeleton sits on a table during an electrocardiogram monitoring class at CollegeAmerica in Fort Collins in this file photo.(Photo: Coloradoan library)

The schools' graduation and employment rates in multiple programs in Flagstaff have also lagged the benchmarks set by the accrediting body.

In one program at the Flagstaff campus, a bachelor's in computer science, the employment rate was zero percent. The benchmarks require 70 percent of graduates to be employed in their field.

The school said the primary factor in low graduation and employment rates for the computer science program was low enrollment, so the school decided not to enroll new students and instead teach out the ones who were in the program.

But the Flagstaff school also appeared to place blame for low employment and graduation rates on the Native American culture of its students. The accrediting body said this misplaced blame showed a "profound lack of sensitivity to the students the school serves."

The school told the accreditor that 65 percent of its students on the Flagstaff campus are Native American. The school also covers a large geographic area and commutes can be as long as three hours one way.

“(CollegeAmerica's) response essentially posits that American Indians cannot be as successful as other students due to their culture ...”

Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges

“Due to this population mix, CollegeAmerica Flagstaff is faced with several unique and challenging cultural factors that must be considered and/or addressed when serving this population,” the school wrote.

The school pointed to a lack of eye contact, a focus on living in the present, a lack of emphasis on time, difficulty in speaking up and religious observation as challenges with Native American culture.

“Clocks are not watched. Schedules are fluid and not valued,” the school wrote. "This makes deadlines and schedules difficult for our students to understand and appreciate."

The accrediting body rebuked the school for labeling cultural values as “challenges to be addressed.” Such a label “contributes to the impression of a lack of respect for its students’ closely held cultural values and that the school is ill-equipped to meet the needs of its students,” the accreditor wrote.

The accreditor said it was “astounded” to see the school generalize its students’ culture and then blame the school’s bad outcomes on it.

“The school’s response essentially posits that American Indians cannot be as successful as other students due to their culture, which the Commission found to be in no way acceptable as a mitigating factor for the school’s low graduation rates,” the accrediting body wrote.

Juhlin said the school was trying to explain how much focus and appreciation it has for the culture of its Native American students, but said the school did a "poor job" of doing so.

"We did a poor job in our narrative. We came across as being critical, which is completely opposite of how we run our school," Juhlin said.

Colorado lawsuit alleging 'deceptive practices'

CollegeAmerica has schools in Colorado Springs, Fort Collins and Denver.

The lawsuit continues. The case went to trial in late 2017, but a judge has yet to rule.

Juhlin said the Colorado lawsuit, and uncertainty over its outcome, likely played into the accrediting body's probation decision. He also noted that the closure of large for-profit school groups have been a "black eye" on some accrediting bodies, and they likely don't want to be criticized for not being aggressive.

In 2016, the Obama administration blocked an application by the Center for Excellence in Higher Education to reclassify as a nonprofit for the purposes of receiving federal grants and loans.